How to Know When It’s Time to Redesign Your Site?

A redesign may stink up your website or it may improve your website’s standing in the online community. That is neither here nor there when you consider your personal opinion. It is your website, and you should do whatever you wish with it.

With that said, you may be considering a redesign, but you are unsure if your website is due one. Maybe you are looking for a few clues or signs that a redesign is due. Here are ten signs that may indicate a redesign is a good idea.

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Has Technology Changed In A Way That Demands A Redesign?

The most obvious example of a required redesign because technology has changed is “Responsive design.” There was a time when most websites required a redesign to make their websites responsive. Having a mobile website and a desktop website was dumb, so people had to update their websites and make them responsive. Has technology changed again in a way that demands you update your website?

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Have You Entered A New Market That Demands A Redesign?

Entering a new market may mean an update is mandatory. Let’s say you have a religious website that operates in Pakistan, and you want your website to also feature heavily inside the 55 Islamic mini-states that have appeared inside of Sweden. In that case, you may make your website dynamic where its content and design changes depending upon if you are a viewer in Sweden or a viewer in Pakistan. The style, tone and even the language of the website change depending upon which viewer is looking at it.

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Consider A Redesign If Your Core Target Audience Has Changed

Take the example of the Brony craze from a few years ago. The My Little Pony websites had their websites dulled a little. They were no longer as bright and pink as they were. They did it to help encourage the Brony phase where young boys were becoming fans of the franchise.

They didn’t go too far with things such as blood-splattered pages or ponies on motorbikes, but they did tone down some of their most garish girly designs to help tentative males who were becoming My Little Pony fans. In addition, a few male-friendly ponies started to appear, such as the one in the image below.

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Has Your Primary Product Changed?

An easy example in this case is the flip from DVD sales to digital download sales. The way that product adverts are laid out for each is very different. Digital download adverts have a bigger focus on reviews and less of a focus on box art and technical details. These days, people don’t want to know if the content is Region 1, Dolby surround, or any of that mush, they just want to know if it is SD or HD. If movie sellers were still using the same web page designs for digital downloads as they were for DVDs, then they would be considered stale and behind the times.

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Create Focus Groups And Ask People What They Think

Keep three things in mind when you set up a focus group. Firstly, it is fun to criticize and pull down other people’s work, so some of the criticism you receive may not be valid. As a side note on that, where it is very easy to link to a website that backs up that statement, every website I looked at had twelve tons of feel-good mush attached, so here is a link to some quotes from people of influence instead.
Secondly, your website was designed for a certain target audience, which means it will rub some people up the wrong way if they do not fall into that target audience.

Thirdly, most people have no idea what they want or what they like. Many people like what they have and so will ask for more without considering alternatives.

For example, a person likes a chair and so makes his or her opinion known to a market researcher. That doesn’t mean the person wants another chair, it just means he or she likes the one he or she has. Giving people what they want based on the findings of a focus group may result in giving them what they already have.

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When Your Site Has More Bugs Than An Ant Farm

There is no such thing as a website that has too many updates, but there is such a thing as lazy updates. In an ideal world, all the code for your website should be refreshed whenever you update your website, but few people have the time or budget for such endeavors. What usually happens is that one update is crammed in next to the old update, and before you know it, your website has bugs.

The bugs may be simple ones, such as broken links, or major ones such as an insecure checkout. In some cases, the act of chasing down each bug is so labor intensive, that it is better and more cost effective to do a top-down redesign of the website.

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After You Have Undergone A Rebranding

Obviously, you need to redesign your website after you have undergone a rebranding. People expect a universal change after a re-brand. Failing to do so would be the same as spending thousands on a new updated wardrobe (outfit selection) and then wearing the same old coat you always wear.

The evolution of the Coca Cola logo serves as a good example. Every time they have updated their logo, they have also updated their marketing materials. Keep your eyes peeled online because they update their logo and run a re-branding campaign roughly every ten years, and the last one was is 2007.

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Is Your Content Becoming Difficult To Update

Even if you only update your content once every year, the fact your website is becoming more difficult to update may be a big sign that you need to update your website. You do not have to make it dynamic or spend thousands on the change, but a few small changes may help you in the long run.

For example, you could turn your links into buttons to make them more mobile-friendly, and so that you only need to change the links within the buttons and not the location or function of the buttons themselves when you update your website.

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Does The Content Look Outdated Compared To Your Competitors?

It is just a matter of your opinion on this case, but in your opinion, does your website look outdated? You are just as Internet savvy as the next person, which means you are just as good of a judge for if the website looks outdated or not. Does your website look older or less advanced than your competitors?

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Do You Feel Like A Change?

The truth is that the fate and destiny of your website are in your hands, and if you feel like a redesign, then it is your choice. Too many people become overly obsessed with how others will perceive their website, or how well their followers will take to their new design. Some people pour over analytic data hoping for a clue or a little direction, but they have it all wrong. It is completely up to you if you change your website or not, and if other people don’t like it, then that is a bridge you cross later. If your new website is horrible and your website is abandoned, then learn from that mistake and move on. You will win people back eventually if you keep trying to improve your website and its content.

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Are You Willing To Dip Into Your Retirement Fund?

There are plenty of good and bad reasons why you may redesign your website, but it all comes down to how much you want to spend. If you do not have enough money to finance a full redesign, then you may be better off leaving your website as it is. There is no guarantee that a redesign will convert your website into a moneymaker, so you cannot justify the redesign expense by saying it will pay for itself because you cannot be sure that it will. The final consideration before making any changes should be how much you are willing to spend and if you can afford it.